It has been one of ‘those’ days…
I reread this post tonight and realized it needs another edit, so here is a new version with fewer grammatical errors and maybe a bit more clarity. It wasn’t exactly a good day when I wrote all of this down. 28-Aug-2008
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Let’s skip the wind up and boring crap. Shall we? On my way to work I had front row tickets to the event of a lifetime and I really don’t mean that in a good way. I witness the spectacle of a Ducati Monster S4R 1000 slamming into the back of a Toyota Celica on I-5. This wasn’t a glance or a simple traffic incident. It was full-on high speed impact with a trip to the trauma ward.
Just to be clear, I rode the FJR today. I saw this Ducati behind me on Lombard as I made my way toward the entrance ramp for I-5 south.
Blah, blah, blah.
He had been a few feet behind me at a light then got dropped when I picked my way through traffic more efficiently than he did. When I got to the top of the cloverleaf, I saw he was about 6 car lengths behind me with no one separating us. I did my turn and as usual I pulled tight at the very bottom of the corner so I have better visibility to look at the traffic pattern that I am trying to merge into. Traffic was medium to light, so I merged in, rolling up at about 55 – 60ish. I slid over into the far left lane as usual, crossing two lanes before reaching the farthest third lane.
Got it?
About the time I reach my target lane I hear the Duc wind up. I glance over to see the Monster flying past me in the slow lane. My first thought was, “Where does he think he is going?”
Lombard has two entrance ramps onto I-5 in the southbound direction. In the second, more southerly entrance ramp was a Toyota Celica hatchback, merging into traffic. Here’s a map of the roadway.
There was a tanker truck in the middle lane. I’m in the fast lane. And this Celica is merging into the slow lane.
The short answer to my question is ‘nowhere.’
He wrapped that Duc up so tight and so fast that he couldn’t avoid the merging car. I would guess he was over 80, possibly 100 when he realized that he had a problem. He was mid-stoppie when he slammed into the back of the Celica. It was just astounding. The classic slo-mo kicked in as I watched.
“Where does…?”
“Fuck… “
So picture this, if you care to…
The Duc wraps up and launches (which I don’t see). The bike is stable and obviously cranking. The exhaust note alone told me that he was pushing second and possibly third gear. I can do 80 in second gear on my FJR. The FJR doesn’t have near the horsepower that the S4R has and let’s not talk about the weight differences.
Less weight == faster acceleration.
The Ducati is over 100lbs lighter than my FRJ. So he was off like a rocket in a split second. And a moment later, he saw he had a problem. He grabbed his brakes and made a choice to aim for the acceleration lane/entrance ramp.
He never could have made it.
His trajectory never would have allowed him to clear the ass end of the Celica. To make thing even more interesting, the driver of the car SAW him and tried to pull out of his way by going… you guessed it… back to the acceleration lane the car had just left.
Generally, physics says two items of mass cannot occupy the same location. This was proven quite dramatically to me (again) this morning.
So here is the slow motion memory and mental decomposition. The rider was hard on the throttle. All of the weight bias is on the rear wheel. He realizes he fucked up and grabbed his brakes, hard. Instantly bike became very unstable as all of the weight shifts to the front wheel. The rear end trying to walk around. This is commonly called ‘swapping ends.’ Anyway the bike is shaking badly until the rear wheel lifts off the pavement. Stoppie. The bike was jacked up on the front wheel, slightly leaned to the right as he aimed for the right shoulder of the freeway. The rear wheel must have been two feet off the ground at the moment of impact. The fork looked perpendicular to the ground in that fleeting moment. The rider slammed into the rear window on the car, head first. The glass shatters and that sickening thud echoes in the asphalt canyon. His limp body rag-dolled off the back of the car, continuing on his original trajectory.
Later examination of the bike proved that it must have cart-wheeled. How else to you do shatter the head light and much a major scrap on the TOP of the headlight? I can half-way remember watching the black bike gently roll forward, riderless. The rear wheel was skyward and…
I lost sight of him after he flew past the car. I was, after all, trying to pilot my own motorcycle at 60mph, in rush hour traffic, on I-5, without a single Red Bull in my blood stream. (I was very mellow.) When I glanced back to my right, I saw him sliding into the retaining wall then to my horror… here comes the Ducati! It plowed into him again. At first, I thought it was going to ride up on him and stay there, but it spun around and away from him, stopped on the yellow line a few feet past him.
Fuck me running…
I looked behind me checking for a clear space to dive for the breakdown lane. The adrenaline hit was enormous. I was excited enough that I had trouble getting my helmet unbuckled and off my head, but not uncontrollably so. My hands had started to shake. I ripped my headgear off and ran over to look at him. He was still. Eyes closed. Unconscious. I wasn’t sure if he was breathing or not, but other people were arriving on scene and I had 911 on my cell phone before I reached his side. I kept yelling at one woman to not remove his helmet. She would argue and I would argue louder. Standing there in my leathers, gloves, and boots with only my helmet off, phone in my ear I’m sure I didn’t look like a nice guy in that moment. I wasn’t. I’m screaming at people trying to save this guy’s life it that’s possible. All while, I’m on hold with 911.
I said it before. I’ll say it again.
Fuck
me
running…
After a few moments, his chest expanded and he began a ragged breath rhythm. (Broken ribs?) A doctor showed up out of nowhere. He checked the guy’s pulse and made sure he wasn’t going to die right then and there. Police, fire, and EMTs showed up a lifetime later (Read: under 5 minutes, maybe 3). It all happened so fast.
I backed off while the EMTs did their thing. The patrol cops asked me for a statement. I gave it without giving them an impact speed estimate. I just couldn’t tell and everything would be a guess, so why make it worse?
While I am standing there talking with the good Samaritans that stopped, I started looking at the pile of scrap before me. Newer Ducati S4R 1000. Arrow carbon exhaust. Speedy Moto clutch cover and exposed clutch bits. Ducati aftermarket turn signals. Chopped tail. The rear tire had almost no chicken strips left on it. Brembo brakes.
I bought a S2R with Carbon exhaust for my girlfriend just a few weeks earlier. I know this bike.
Fuck!
The front end was screwed. The steer tube or the triple clamp snapped, separating the forks from the frame. The only thing keeping everything attached and contained was the cables. The headlight had grind marks on the top of it from the cart wheel. The front wheel was broken, raw metal exposed from the impact with the rear bumper. It snapped completely across the rim, parallel to the axle. The front tire was still in place, but there was a space in the tire curvature where there wasn’t any rim touching it. In frustration and disgust, I kicked one of the lane splitter mirrors over to the bike.
The EMTs worked quickly, cutting away his jacket, shirt and pants. The Alpinestar boots were ground up pretty good, but appeared to do their job. I didn’t see what jacket he was wearing. It was textile and they cut it open in seconds. A large pool of blood had collected under his left arm. (I am wondering if the bike didn’t do that when it slid into him after the initial impact.) The helmet seemed to do its job, but it looked like a cheap one. Basic black. Not an Arai or Shoei or even a Scorpion or HJC. The visor was gone and the top, front was ground away.
Could someone please explain to me why someone would spend $25K+ on a motorcycle and then cheap out on their armour?
After a while, the EMTs migrated him onto a board, then a stretcher and into the ambulance. The police had taken their preliminary statements. I was asked to hang around, if I could, until the accident response team showed up.
“Sure.”
I was still in a daze of sorts.
The real kicker in all of this was what I saw when the police were looking for his ID. In his light green messenger bag, they found two certificates from a motorcycle racing school. He had just gotten his racing license and was now allowed to race. When I see this, I start to wonder if he had been trying to “teach me a lesson” or “show me who was boss out here.” I really wonder what the fuck he was thinking. I didn’t see anywhere to go which is why I wasn’t doing 100 in morning rush hour traffic! I matched, merged, and settled into my spot in just seconds, while he tried to kill himself. Why? Because I dropped him in traffic? Because he was riding this super-tricked out Duc, now he had his racing license, and felt the need to show everyone what he could do? I know I can do some truly stupid shit at times, but come on!
Dumbass!
One of the firemen asked me if I was OK. “Sure. I’m fine. I wasn’t involved in the actual accident in any material way. I just stopped when I saw him go down.” “I know you are not hurt. That doesn’t mean that you are OK. Maybe you should take that next exit and get a coffee or a brewsky. You should stay off your bike until you are sure that you are calm and ready to ride.” “I’m fine… Thank you for asking.”
The driver of the Celica wanted to talk with me. Several people had been staying with her farther down the shoulder while I had gravitated to the motorcyclist. She saw me walking her way and started crying. She was stuttering through her tears. She thought I knew the other rider. She rides. She saw him and tried to get out of his way. On and on… I told her that it wasn’t her fault. He made a bad choice and she could not have avoided him.
And that, I believe, is the truth. Once I realized in that split second that he wasn’t going to be able to stop, I did my own ‘moto analysis’ looking for ways out. Regardless her actions, he would have clipped the rear of the car with the path he chose. She jerked back, trying to evade him but it didn’t matter. The only possible way he could have avoided her was if she had jerked the car farther into his original path. That wasn’t gonna happen. I believe if he would have chosen to stay up, not brake, and hammer it, he might have made it. Instead, he picked the “racer’s way” and aimed for the object he was trying to avoid counting on the fact that it always moves. Sure, the rule for racers is to aim for the incident. The wreckage will move from the original spot and trying to ‘avoid it’ will only complicate things. That’s all well and good on the track, but on the freeway, things are different. Cars don’t move very fast when compared to the speed of a bike and there WASN’T a wreak until he HIT the car. The scenario doesn’t apply when you are the dipshit head-butting the car!
He had a way out. With his closing rate, he should have passed the car before it completed the lane change. She pulled away when she was right in the middle of the two lanes. He still had half a lane directly in line with his original path, plus the option to lane split. All were directly in front of him. Right there. It seemed so obvious to me in that split second. I have been forced to lane split and rocket it out of a bad situation. I know it works. I have also grabbed a handful of brake and locked my front wheel trying not to end up as part of an auto-sandwich. Instead, he chose to go where the car ‘was’. There was no way he could have slowed enough to clear the rear quarter of the car. By changing course, he made the final bad choice in the sequence. Not contextualizing the situation: rush hour. Opening up the Monster on a busy freeway. Thinking like a racer and expected the other motorists to conform to his assumptions. Thinking avoidance instead of escape. This was a chain of bad choices. One step at a time… until he was gasping for breath, unconscious on the side of the freeway at 8:35 in the morning.
I think he was on top of the dotted line at the moment of impact. He needed to be another 4 feet to the right to clear the car, IF it had stayed on course. He pegged it almost dead center, so he was a long way from clearign the car at the moment of impact.
I tried to calm the Celica driver down a bit. It really wasn’t her fault. Any time one vehicle rear-ends another… That’s the way our laws are written. If I rear-end you, it is my fault (generally speaking). She stopped crying and mumbling about offering her prayers. I held my tongue regarding my own beliefs in god or any other higher power. A police officer came to collect her. I would assume that seeing the small female driver talking to a larger male in leathers at the scene of a motorcycle accident might not be a good thing from his perspective. He walked her back toward his cruiser, north, past the EMTs, broken body and machine.
I stood on the shoulder watching them walk away, realizing that she wasn’t wearing any shoes…
I was asked again what I saw and again and again. The other witnesses. The guy doing the photos for the police. Another officer.
“What do you think caused the accident?” “He made a bad choice.”
“Do you know him?” “No. I don’t know him. We were together by circumstance and not intension”
“Do you know what kind of bike that is?” “Yes, I just bought one similar to it for my girlfriend.”
Eventually I was dismissed. I got back on my bike and did the exact same thing I had done just 45 minutes earlier. I looked at the flow, rolled it up, merged and got into my target lane.
Off to work.
One of my buddies at work took me to lunch where we talked about what I had seen. Scott used to ride and wants to find another bike as soon as he can swing it, so he understands the complexities of the risk vs. reward of motorcycling.
I sat in meetings all day, silent, staring off into space, wondering…
When I headed home, traffic was terrible. I took the first exit once I had crossed the river. I wandered my way home on back streets and through quiet neighborhoods.
Slow and even.
After all, it has been one of ‘those’ days…
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Post Scripts:
Update: Crash
Looking Back
